Meet The Conservatives Who Are Trying To Kill Immigration Reform

Immigration reformers have the wind at their backs this week,
buoyed by support not just from Republican senators, but an array
of conservative interest groups who have signed on to their
cause.

But the reignited debate is also driving the opposition’s
hardliners out into the open, offering the clearest picture yet
of the fault lines Congress must overcome to pass a bill.

Among lawmakers, most Republicans in Congress are taking a
wait-and-see approach for now.

An exception in the Senate is David Vitter (R-LA), who
ripped into Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Wednesday as
“amazingly naive” and “nuts” for supporting the Senate’s
bipartisan plan.

In the House, a handful of Republican members made clear
immediately that they were not on board for anything resembling
the reforms under discussion in the Senate and White House.

And despite
Republican efforts to neutralize attacks on a path to
citizenship for undocumented immigrants as “amnesty,” the dreaded
a-word was at the center of their attacks.

“By granting amnesty, the Senate proposal actually compounds the
problem by encouraging more illegal immigration,” Rep. Lamar
Smith (R-TX) said in a statement.

“It’s very difficult for me to support something that allows that
type of amnesty,” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) told
Newsday.

Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) has also taken on an early role as an
outspoken critic of reform.

At least as troubling for national Republicans hoping to use
immigration talks as a means to repair their political standing
after 2012 is conservative media’s reactions.

While some major TV personalities like Sean Hannity and Bill
O’Reilly have voiced support for a comprehensive bill, other
major outlets and commentators are preparing for war. And already
the conversation is drifting to arguments that could further
alienate Hispanic voters.

One emerging meme on the right, for example, is that Hispanics
will never vote for Republicans because their community is
inherently contemptuous of capitalism and family values. This was
a key argument in the National
Review’s editorial condemning the Senate’s immigration
framework on Wednesday:

“[I]f we are to take Hispanics at their word, conservative
attitudes toward illegal immigration are a minor reason for their
voting preferences. While many are in business for themselves,
they express hostile attitudes toward free enterprise in polls.
They are disproportionately low-income and disproportionately
likely to receive some form of government support. More than half
of Hispanic births are out of wedlock. Take away the Spanish
surname and Latino voters look a great deal like many other
Democratic constituencies.”

Rush Limbaugh, who recently declared that “it’s up to me and FOX
News” to stop a bill from passing, told Rubio in an
interview this week that he believed immigrants no longer
came to America because they wanted “to become citizens of the
greatest country on earth.”

“I’ve seen a number of research, scholarly research data, which
says that a vast majority of arriving immigrants today come here
because they believe that government is the source of prosperity,
and that’s what they support,” Limbaugh said.

As he did with Limbaugh, Rubio has been making the rounds with
almost every major conservative media personality to pitch
reform. But while they’ve offered him a respectful hearing and
often praised him personally, many still appear skeptical of any
legislation and could form the core of any organized opposition
to a bill.

RedState’s Erick Erickson, often a bellwether for the
conservative grassroots, also
opposed the Senate’s plan, albeit for less conventionally
partisan reasons than Limbaugh or the National Review.

According to Erickson, one of his chief concerns was that
the bill doesn’t expand legal immigration to low-skill workers
enough to discourage people from entering the country illegally.
Rubio wrote a lengthy
point-by-point rebuttal on Erickson’s site arguing that a
temporary worker program included in the Senate plan would
address the issue.